


On the Edge of a Blade

by kris932



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Big Brother Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne is Robin, Damian Wayne-centric, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Fencing, Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Sports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 01:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13893729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kris932/pseuds/kris932
Summary: "Apparently, there are waivers to sign and parental meetings to attend when the sport one is trying to join includes stabbing other people in a mockery of ancient warfare."Damian grudgingly joins a sport, has angsty-teenage feelings, dashes all of Grayson's hopes and dreams, and fixes them all in one fell swoop.





	On the Edge of a Blade

It is a pathetic joke to compare this sport to his lessons with his Mother and Grandfather. Excessive padding, thick plastic breast plates, and a wire mask. All to dull blows from an already dull blade. Damian is not impressed. He can still vividly remember the feel of flesh parting unnaturally from flesh, warm blood staining blade, clothes, and sand. Sometimes his, sometimes others. He was a young child at the time and he had lost a lot during training, after all. His tutors were dangerous men and not prone to going easy on him just because of his youth. 

Damian doesn’t lose anymore. 

Well at least not against these plebian “peers” of his at school and competitions. It had been Grayson’s idea, like so many other ridiculous ideas, for him to join the fencing team at school. Some nonsense about being more social. 

His brief but fleeting hope that his Father would back him up due to security issues gets shattered when Grayson preemptively talks to Bruce. 

He barely grumbles his dissent when his Father agrees that Damian should at least *try*. At the very least practice will take him out of class twice a week and matches will let him occasionally skip school. Anything taking him away from the tedium of the sub par educational system he is subjected to is pleasing to him. He’d be more pleased to abandon it all and get private tutors, but Grayson had convinced him that he had to wait until at least his sixteenth birthday. 

Damian’s fifteen and Bruce in between his busy schedule of being Brucie and Batman drives Damian into school on morning. Apparently, there are waivers to sign and parental meetings to attend when the sport one is trying to join includes stabbing other people in a mockery of ancient warfare. 

Practice has already started, and Father and Son look out over the gym with matching looks of apprehension. Slight tensing of muscles, civilians would never notice, indicate both wish to turn and leave. 

But Grayson is back at the manor for a visit this week and neither Bruce nor Damian have ever been good at telling the man no. 

*-*-*-*-*

Coach Stahl is in his thirties. Tall and lean, with salt and pepper hair. He gives Brucie a slightly mocking smile of superiority as the two men shake hands.  
Damian wants to stab him. It’s an impulse around people that grate on his nerves that he still has not quite grown out of in the last five years spent training under his Father and his so-called siblings. 

Luckily for him, he’ll be able to act on said impulse in a few minutes. 

“Well you see Mr. Wayne,” Stahl is talking when Damian starts to listen. Brucie is beaming at the coach. “I can’t promise Damian here a spot on the team, just because of your generous donation.”

Damian thinks that’s highly unlikely. It had been a *very* generous donation after all. 

“But after Damian stretches, I’m willing to see if he might be able to cut it. But, I don’t want to make any promises, Mr. Wayne.”

Damian stops listening as his Father gives some inane answer and walks over to one of the abandoned exercise mats by the wall. He stretches as he eyes his future combatants.  
He could beat all of them one handed when he was five he concludes. None of them have Talia al Ghul’s sleek grace, or Ra’s power. 

One kid stumbles and Damian amends his thoughts to comparing them to hacking at trees in the Manor’s gardens when he first moved in. 

*-*-*-*-*

The uniform is brand new and uncomfortable. All starchy and stiff, the plastic plate strapped across his chest rubbing in his armpits. The helmet with its mesh face covering is worse. His vision, usually crystal clear through the lenses of his domino mask, now are checkered by the black wired frame. 

Coach Stahl hands him a beat up practice foil. Damian has six brand new blades (practice and competition of each style) in his bag, but he takes the foil anyway.  
It’s light. Lighter than his favorite katanas. Lighter than the practice blades of his youth. It feels unnatural. Awkward. 

It still doesn’t make this anything remotely close to a fair fight. 

*-*-*-*-*

He lets the coach get the first three hits, much the same way Todd will lose at pool in dingy bars before cleaning every drunk patron out of their gambling money.  
The smug superiority on the older man’s face will be fun to wipe clean. 

Damian smiles, a wicked look that Stahl does not fail to notice. It makes the coach pause half a second and Damian easily makes his first score. 

Damian is smirking now and he can sense his Father shifting ever so slightly off the side of the match. He can’t tell if Bruce is pleased or not, but surely his Father had to expect  
that Damian would not be able to down play his skill. After all, he is barely trying, as he makes contact the next two times. 

It would be harder for him to fake being a novice. 

The match ends within minutes, Stahl pulling off his helmet, face screwed up in shock, the match ending far sooner and with a result he never would have expected.  
Brucie Wayne’s loud boisterous laughter echoes through the gym as Bruice moves to join his son. 

“So Coach,” he smiles his white blinding paparazzi smile and claps the other man soundly on his shoulder. “Did my kiddo here make the team?”

“Ah, well, right uh,” Stahl bunders through his answer, “yes he did. The foil team…”

“Ttt” Damian rolls his eyes and puts his blade down carefully with the other equipment. No reason to take his frustrations out on the innocent blade. 

Both men turn to look at him.

“If I am to join this pathetic endeavor I will settle for no less than sabre as my main blade.” 

Stahl looks like he wants to protest, but then seems to remember just how quickly he was just defeated. 

*-*-*-*-*

Practice is easy and the official competitions soon prove that Damian is unbeatable with a blade in his hand.

Several terrorist cells, the criminal element of Gotham, and the current Teen Titans could all have said that years ago. 

Brucie hand waves his son’s talent away when asked about it at parties. He claims Alfred taught his son everything the kid knows. 

So Damian wins time and time again.

He never thinks anything of it. It’s boring compared to patrol, where the steel of his katanas can kill if he doesn’t keep his skill and temper in check. His cape slows him down and makes it hard to maneuver. He’s just about grown out of the uniform and sketches of a sleeker more subdued Robin uniform fill one of his many sketchbooks. 

It’s a conversation he figures Batman will pawn off on Nightwing soon enough. 

Two months shy of his sixteenth birthday Damian comes home to two men sitting and talking to Bruce and Alfred in the study. Pennyworth takes Damian’s gym bag and backpack from him and closes the study door firmly as he leaves. Damian is left standing, refusing to ask who these people are.

*-*-*-*-*

It turns out that the International Fencing Federation and the USA Men’s Olympic Sabre fencing team are very interested in Damian Wayne’s quick rise to fencing fame. 

*-*-*-*-*

“I am not interested, thank you for your time.” He bites out, barely polite for the third time. The men do not seem keen to take ‘no’ for an answer. 

The two representatives are looking at him as if he’s grown two heads, Nightwing’s fashion sense, and performed the electric slide all at once. Horrified and confused. 

Bruce interrupts before the conversation turns dangerous, and Damian slips out of the room without saying goodbye to the two men.

He gives a sharp whistle and Titus is at his side panting and begging for a walk. It is a much better welcome home in Damian’s opinion. 

*-*-*-*-*

He’s zip tying a mugger’s hands behind their back when Nightwing somersaults down beside him. Batman is off in another section of the city working a case with Red Robin. Most nights end up like this. 

Robin’s still frustrated from the day, a sort of sick crawling feeling under his skin, that even beating up the scum of Gotham hasn’t helped with. 

He hasn’t felt this homesick since he was ten and fresh to Gotham. 

Nightwing informs the police of the mugger’s location, and then tugs on his baby bird’s cape until Robin gives in and follows the man up to the rooftops.  
Once they are settled safe up against the feet of one of their favorite gargoyles with a clearish view of the city lights before them, Nightwing presses a slightly melty to go cup of vanilla milkshake into Robin’s gloved hand. 

Robin doesn’t protest. Just sips the sweet treat and looks out over the city he protects with his blood and sweat and not that he’d admit it under pain of death, tears. 

“You turned down a chance at going to the Olympics.” 

Nightwing’s voice sounds strained to Robin’s ears. 

“I did.”

“B didn’t push you towards that decision, right? Like, you can take this opportunity if you want.”

“I’m not interested. Father had nothing to do with my decision.”

Nightwing sighs, his normal cheerfully painful grin gone. 

“As long as you are making this choice, because you want to make this choice.” That tinge of jealousy, something Robin is unaccustomed to hearing from his partner, is still in Nightwing’s voice. 

The sound jars Robin and he wants it to go away. It doesn’t suit the bright hero sipping a milkshake beside him at all. 

Bright lights, the cheering of crowds, the adoration of a nation. Grayson deserves all these things. Dreams of Olympic gold. Damian can easily imagine Grayson thriving in the spotlight after winning gold after gold for the gymnastics team. Grayson’s normal beaming smile scoring him commercials and endorsements and throngs of adoring men and women. 

But when it comes to himself, the noise of the crowd would just make him more tense, inane interviews would try his limited patience and the USA has never been something he’s particularly loyal to. English is like his fifth language and he still (legally!) has passports for dual citizenship. He thinks instead of Titus and Alfred the Cat and the weekends spent out at the Kent’s farm. He pushes aside thoughts of cool nights and Talia’s voice weaving grand stories, prizes he requested for doing well in his studies. 

“I already have plans following my sixteenth birthday.” He states instead.

“Oh?”

“And I would appreciate your company when I start looking at wildlife veterinarian internships this summer.”

Nightwing smiles, warm and bright at Robin and Damian can’t help but return the smile with a smaller version of his own. 

“I could use some aid with coming up with a name for the comic publishing company I’m starting. Batman has already vetoed my idea of Batcomics, Inc.”

Nightwing snorts into his milkshake. 

“I’d love to help babybat,” he says once his throat is clear from his choked laughter.

A siren wails not far away. Nightwing and Robin finish their milkshakes as dawn comes creeping in.


End file.
